IKE Double Pump

[nittany03]

Dude, it's a methodology not a religion. I'm not trying to start a weiner measuring contest either, just want to say we work in different fields.

And this has nothing to do with people. It has to do with weather, airplanes, and changing priorities. No matter how much of a trusting environment I give the airplanes they're still going to do their own thing.

This one will really blow your mind: every year when I do workforce planning, on paper my teams are over 100% tasked, often 150%. But that's ok because many of the projects I'm planning to will be delayed. Having other projects on deck allows me to fill in the space between the big rocks as the schedule and priorities allow. White space for the team and resources is bad.

I'm sure your methodology works for your job. The ultimate point, though, is what the Navy is finding out about shipyard availabilities. Ultimately, in risky environments, it makes good project management sense to pad your estimate to account for reasonable risks, whether that's unforeseen software bugs, unforeseen ship corrosion, or a laborers' strike on the job site. Also, that iterative processes make a lot of sense in environments which have a high degree of uncertainty. Because when you say it's going to take X dollars and Y days to do Z, and those error bars are huge, you need to account for the error bars.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

I think that all of the talk about how to find efficiencies in project management is a great discussion that's answering a different problem.

The Navy knows it takes on average x months to overhaul y class ship with a standard deviation of z weeks. From a macro scale we should just plan on the avail taking x + 2z. The odd avail that goes really long or the cases that go a month over won't move the needle... Yea a crew will bitch about being extended 3 weeks on occasion but in the scheme of things that's not the end of the world.

Instead we say x is too long so we want it to be 0.75x because setting tight deadlines is how you 'hold people accountable' and get people to work faster. Then we plan our entire ship rotation around that and when the number comes out to be x everyone is suddenly surprised about how that could possibly happen.

Finding growth work only affects the project timeline when the job is critical path. A good portion of overruns come from unsat tests that require rework.

Finding efficiencies to make the availabilities shorter will help, but I'm not entirely convinced that 0.75x doesn't become a moving target as a result.

I feel the larger the ship the longer the delay, I think all the overhauls I was on that went long were by months, not weeks.

yes we did have some unsat test that resulted in corrections but those delays didn't compare to the delays due to underestimating how long it takes to do the overhaul, too bad they didn't do what you talk about.

 

[Farva01]

Yeah everyone is talking about the Ike, but the TR is heading out again as well, maybe sooner than expected.

Case. In. Point.

A few months after getting home, the Theodore Roosevelt is about to deploy again

“There’s a lot of pent-up frustration with Big Navy,” one TR spouse said of the looming double pump. “Like, what are you doing?”

www.navytimes.com

 

[Brett327]

Case. In. Point.

A few months after getting home, the Theodore Roosevelt is about to deploy again

“There’s a lot of pent-up frustration with Big Navy,” one TR spouse said of the looming double pump. “Like, what are you doing?”

www.navytimes.com

It’s not as though it’s a surprise. Doesn’t lessen the impact on people and their families, but this schedule has been known for more than three years. One must prepare Sailors and their families for the moments in the schedule that will inevitably prove challenging. Obviously, COVID has been a kick to the groin in a lot of ways.

 

[taxi1]

If we're not holding much in reserve, what happens when the real stuff hits the fan?

 

[Brett327]

If we're not holding much in reserve, what happens when the real stuff hits the fan?

Depends on the theater. All the more reason to pick our battles wisely.

 

[Farva01]

It’s not as though it’s a surprise. Doesn’t lessen the impact on people and their families, but this schedule has been known for more than three years. One must prepare Sailors and their families for the moments in the schedule that will inevitably prove challenging. Obviously, COVID has been a kick to the groin in a lot of ways.

Two deployments was always the plan. But the fact that we are about to lose the holidays is a surprise. So, yeah, this isn’t going to sit well when I update the squadron on Monday with a different schedule than what we have talked about for the last three years.

 

[hscs]

One thing that is missing from this whole discussion- lack of tradesmen and the allocation of the tradesmen. If you look around the yards, not many young bucks out there, and with a lack of a non-college professional track in high schools, we won’t replace those workers.

The bigger issue - a project sup does not receive a group of tradesmen that are his. They are shared amongst all projects, so you could need a specific trade and they will not be available because of growth work on another project, worker is sick, worker called in sick because of a union thing, etc.

A lot is on the ship - you have to do the little stuff every day underway and be honest with what isn’t working.

This is the problem - not the type of software we use to plan. You can plan with anything- pretty sure that Noah built the Ark on time without help from a computer.

 

[BigRed389]

One thing that is missing from this whole discussion- lack of tradesmen and the allocation of the tradesmen. If you look around the yards, not many young bucks out there, and with a lack of a non-college professional track in high schools, we won’t replace those workers.

The bigger issue - a project sup does not receive a group of tradesmen that are his. They are shared amongst all projects, so you could need a specific trade and they will not be available because of growth work on another project, worker is sick, worker called in sick because of a union thing, etc.

A lot is on the ship - you have to do the little stuff every day underway and be honest with what isn’t working.

This is the problem - not the type of software we use to plan. You can plan with anything- pretty sure that Noah built the Ark on time without help from a computer.

+100

Debating project management methods is pointless if the yards or even regional private repair industry isn't able to meet their requirement for skilled labor manhours.

Same for non-existent repair parts with long lead times.

 

[Spekkio]

One thing that is missing from this whole discussion- lack of tradesmen and the allocation of the tradesmen. If you look around the yards, not many young bucks out there, and with a lack of a non-college professional track in high schools, we won’t replace those workers.

The bigger issue - a project sup does not receive a group of tradesmen that are his. They are shared amongst all projects, so you could need a specific trade and they will not be available because of growth work on another project, worker is sick, worker called in sick because of a union thing, etc.

Yep. And sometimes if a ship goes long and a higher priority ship comes in, they'll just stop work on ship A and go to work on ship B.

A lot is on the ship - you have to do the little stuff every day underway and be honest with what isn’t working.

This is another aspect but it typically stems from ownership not malice. During the planning meetings I had to tell every chief to transfer jobs to depot that they thought they would fix even though they didn't have the parts in hand or the job was so big that it wasn't going to get done in the next pierside avail.

The other side of the coin is we get strict guidelines on what PMS can be performed while deployed from the theater commander and that will typically result in a very long list of overdue items that can barely be made up in a back-to-back FRTP. I'm not sure if carriers have the same restrictions.

There are many issues that warrants a deep dive.

 

[MIDNJAC]

A lot is on the ship - you have to do the little stuff every day underway and be honest with what isn’t working.

This is definitely a problem. If it is broken when the ship pulls out for deployment, it probably isn't getting fixed for the next 9 months. I'd say that either 1) folks are not exercising due diligence when they identify and report damaged/inop equipment, or 2) we are collectively letting ships pull out of the yards with far too much deferred mx. I get it, there are parts supply issues, and there is an immense pressure to meet deployment schedules. Circle back to original debate here

 

[snake020]

Can someone articulate what the role of the CNO is? A lack of any comments on two carriers double pumping in this environment smacks of leading from behind.

 

[Brett327]

Can someone articulate what the role of the CNO is? A lack of any comments on two carriers double pumping in this environment smacks of leading from behind.

Just because you aren't aware of it doesn't mean those conversations aren't being had between OPNAV, JS and OSD. There's an entire GFM process that plans out all of this, and provides the services/force providers a venue to weigh in.

 

[Jim123]

Can someone articulate what the role of the CNO is? A lack of any comments on two carriers double pumping in this environment smacks of leading from behind.

Literally CNO's job is to man, train, and equip- and that's the law too. If there's a problem that he can't solve then that next person up is the service secretary. It's the secretary's job to roger up when a problem isn't going to get solved, and to either provide/reallocate time and resources to solve it or acknowledge that it won't get solved. At the same time, the CNO works with the Joint Chiefs to figure out what operating forces they can or can't provide to the COCOMs (i.e. CENTCOM, PACOM, etc...) and all of those guys work for the Secretary of Defense (who works for the President...) and all of them tell Congress how much everything is going to cost.

That's breaking it down Barney-Style, it's kinda abstract, but that's it in a nutshell.

I think what you're really asking is who talks to who and what do they say when someone says they want another aircraft carrier deployed next year, but the answer is yes you can have an aircraft carrier but no, it's not going to be able to do everything it's supposed to do because lots of stuff is still broken or worn out.

The system actually works pretty well if everybody is forthright. Bad news never gets better with time, it only gets worse.


There are some clichés about paper tigers (hollow force is another term that comes up a lot in every postwar drawdown). Paper tigers make for pretty lousy foreign policy, but a really great military costs too much for any country to maintain indefinitely. There's a wide gray area in between where you can maintain a good enough military for a long time, at much less expense, and spend money to make it a lot better if and when the time comes. The trick is to not let it wither away too badly but keep it in that gray area. People have studied this problem and debated it for thousands of years. When you figure out the answer, please let the rest of us in on it.

 

[AllAmerican75]

This is another aspect but it typically stems from ownership not malice. During the planning meetings I had to tell every chief to transfer jobs to depot that they thought they would fix even though they didn't have the parts in hand or the job was so big that it wasn't going to get done in the next pierside avail.

The other side of the coin is we get strict guidelines on what PMS can be performed while deployed from the theater commander and that will typically result in a very long list of overdue items that can barely be made up in a back-to-back FRTP. I'm not sure if carriers have the same restrictions.

It's the exact opposite in the surface fleet. I've seen maintenance intentionally pushed onto the IMA or Depot specifically because ship's force couldn't accomplish it due to time, manpower, or parts prioritization. I've had the exact same job assigned to both ship's force and the RMC and the RMC was somehow able to get parts while we were on a 3 year waiting period.

We also have plenty of daily, weekly, and monthly PMS that we accomplish on deployment. Hell, there are some checks that were save until deployment because it's just easier to get authorization and water space to do them while deployed versus in American waters.